


cutting my fingers off

by stilinskitrash



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Feelings, Not Actually Unrequited Love, One Shot, POV Cardan Greenbriar, but seemingly so, im a cardan apologist okay, the bomb is a cockblock, this is jude sneaking into cardan's room but from his POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 21:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20628023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilinskitrash/pseuds/stilinskitrash
Summary: And I laugh, because she’s here and she’s still Jude. I wish it were enough. My fingers are brushing the smoothness of her face before my mind can act more rationally. Her cheekbones are more sharply cut, surely from being deprived of food in the Undersea and treated as a prisoner. The thought of her being glamoured to believe she was feasting on delicious wonders, when it was probably less than scraps, fills me with enough rage to shake the Shifting Isles. She still looks beautiful. Everything about this hurts.





	cutting my fingers off

**Author's Note:**

> a re-imagining of page 264-267 of the wicked king from cardan's POV. unbeta'd because we die like men and i wrote this at like 3AM.  
title is from cutting my fingers off by turnover which i have claimed as a judecardan song.  
("I never wanted to make you go / You might be a stranger now / And I just wanted to let you know / That I meant what I said / And every dream I've ever had has been of myself / And every dream I've ever had's been of a / Better view with a ten month summer / Losing you is like cutting my fingers off")

My sleep is disturbed by the sudden fact that I can’t breathe. I wake, panic replacing the air in my lungs as I writhe against the hand suffocating me. My body’s still waking up, so my first reaction is to sink my teeth into the palm of my attacker, hoping to cause some shock. The moment I collect my bearings and reach for their throat in the dark, I realise who it is. 

How could I not? She smells the same. Entirely human and overwhelmingly intoxicating. And her breathing, heavy and laboured from fighting against me and surely sneaking into my room, is familiar. I’m unable to control the way my limbs relax, nor the way my mind repeats her name like a mantra. Or a prayer. _ Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude _ . Here, alive, safe, _ here. _

She leans in close so I can feel her breath against my ear. 

“He sent me to kill you,” she whispers, the words fanning my cheek. It shouldn’t have the effect on me that it does. I believe her, I know it’s the truth, yet the familiarity of it to our _ I hate you _foreplay sends shivers down my spine. Part of me wonders how far I’d let her go, if she really decided to carve me up in my own bed. (our bed.)

_ Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude. _

My own pleasure and thrill gets the better of me. I tug her close, holding her by her waist and pulling her onto the bed. Her body rolls over me and all I really want is to keep her there. I want to feel the weight of her above me. I want to kiss every inch of her until my lips and her skin are raw and red and bruised. I missed her, but I don’t think she’d believe me.

Only then does she drop her hand from my mouth, but I fail to find any words to say. Perhaps it’s enough to just have her here. Months of driving myself insane with scenarios of what Orlagh and Balekin were doing to her make me question if this is just a dream and I haven’t really woken up. She’s plagued my dreams for weeks. 

“Balekin and Orlagh are planning your murder,” she says, and all the confidence she had earlier has become a little stilted. I threw her off balance.

“Yes,” it’s not something I couldn’t have already guessed. But I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s what she came here to tell me -- why she came here at all. “So why did I wake up at all?”

The desire to wrap an arm around her again, and have my fingers explore the stretch of soft skin on her hips, is almost too much to bear. 

“Because I am difficult to charm,” she says, for all the understatement that it is.

And I laugh, because she’s here and she’s still Jude. I wish it were enough. My fingers are brushing the smoothness of her face before my mind can act more rationally. Her cheekbones are more sharply cut, surely from being deprived of food in the Undersea and treated as a prisoner. The thought of her being glamoured to believe she was feasting on delicious wonders, when it was probably less than scraps, fills me with enough rage to shake the Shifting Isles. She still looks beautiful. Everything about this hurts.

“I could have told my brother that,” I shrug. Something shifts in her eyes, visible even in the darkness of the bedroom. She’s constantly toeing the line between opening more of herself up to me, or closing me out for good.

Jude bristles slightly. “If you hadn’t allowed Madoc to bar me from seeing you, I might have told you all this sooner. I have information that cannot wait.”

My brow creases. I’d made no such agreement with Madoc. “I know not of what you speak. Madoc told me that you were resting and that we should let you heal.” And, of course, that’s not a lie. I watch her frown as she considers this, considers that her father must be plotting something she failed to anticipate. 

“I see. And in the interim, Madoc would no doubt take my place as your advisor,” the cogs are turning in her head. “He gave your guards orders to keep me out of the palace.”

“I will give them different orders,” I tell her immediately. It’s still hard to believe she’s really here, and the idea that I could’ve seen her sooner if not for Madoc makes my blood boil. 

She lets a silence lap between us, where it’s enough to just drink her in beside me. _ Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude. _If this is a dream, it’s a good one. A cruel one, but a good one nonetheless. Better to see her in my dreams than not at all. I’d thought that before too, before the kisses and the long, dark nights, when my dreams of her felt more like nightmares and it was safer to have her in a way that wasn’t real. And then, foolish and drunk or spiteful and wicked, when I could convince myself it still wasn’t real.

It took her capture and imprisonment for me to fully come to terms with the fact that I wanted it to be real. More than anything. More than the crown or the kingdom. 

Then she says my name, “_ Cardan _,” and I want her to stop there. I can’t bear to hear anymore about politics and plotting when she’s in my bed, sat so close to me. And hearing her say my name is a better high than anything I’ve ever tried. “A representative from the Court of Termites came to see me. She told me something--”

“What they asked in exchange for you,” I finish. “I know all the things you will say. That it was foolish to agree to pay their price. That it destabilizes my rule. That it was a test of my vulnerabilities, and that I failed it. Even Madoc believed it was a betrayal of my obligations, although his alternatives weren’t exactly diplomatic, either. But you do not know Balekin and Nicasia as I do--better they think you are important to me than to believe what they do to you is without consequence.”

_ And you are of ashamedly great importance to me, Jude _. But the words don’t leave my head. She’s staring at me like it all makes sense but her eyes are still apprehensive. She doesn’t trust me, and maybe she never will. I’m not sure what more I can do to prove to her that I won’t hurt her, that I wouldn’t have left her there under the water.

I sit up a little straighter. I’m unclothed beneath the sheets, but Jude is unaware of that. I catch her eyes flickering guiltily across the bare expanse of my chest. 

“I have thought and thought since you were gone, and there is something I wish to say. When my father sent me away, at first I tried to prove that I was nothing like he thought me. But when that didn’t work, I tried to be exactly what he believed I was instead. If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying. I would live down to his every expectation. If I couldn’t have his favor, then I would have his wrath. 

“Balekin did not know what to do with me. He made me attend his debauches, made me serve wine and food to show off his tame little prince. When I grew older and more ill-tempered, he grew to like having someone to discipline. His disappointments were my lashings, his insecurities my flaws. And yet, he was the first person who saw something in me he liked--himself. He encouraged all my cruelty, inflamed all my rage. And I got worse.”

Jude stares at me like I’m playing a trick--she doesn’t believe me. Why would she? All I’ve done is be wicked and tease her. I have little to show in terms of compassion, or kindness. The memories I dredge up when recalling my youth and upbringing sting. My feelings towards Balekin are a complicated creature that only grows more difficult and grotesque as the years pass by. He massacred my -- _ our _\-- family. It’s not something I forget.

“I wasn’t kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn’t sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone--truly gone beneath the waves--I hated myself as I never have before.”

The words feel heavy on my tongue and are bitter when they leave my mouth, but a weight lifts from my shoulders. A tension disappears. Perhaps it isn’t so bad to be so truthful every once in a while, for what it’s worth.

I remember the awful things my peers and I did to Jude and her sister. Watching them almost drown, Valerian’s murderous intent, seeing Jude fight fiercely and desperately for her right to be amongst them. I remember the gratification I felt from being cruel, and the moment that feeling changed. It twisted me up inside, making me confused and angry and wanting. The memories seem almost a little hazy now, with Jude in bed beside me. I want to make new memories.

“Perhaps I am foolish, but I am not a fool. You like something about me. The challenge? My pretty eyes?” I grin, and the unease that I’d put her in shifts a little. The cocky, mischievous version of Cardan I play is ironically the one she seems to feel more comfortable around. “No matter, because there is more you do not like and I know it. I can’t trust you. Still, when you were gone, I had to make a great many decisions, and so much of what I did right was imagining you beside me, Jude, giving me a bunch of ridiculous orders that I nonetheless obeyed.”

She’s stunned into silence. I feel as if I’ve confessed my dirtiest secrets, so I let them wash over her. I can’t help but laugh. No biting remarks, not comebacks, no exasperated looks. I’ve played my hand; a douse of vulnerability, never before exhibited. She isn’t quite sure what to do with it, what to say next.

“Either I’ve surprised you or you are as ill as Madoc claimed.” 

Her mouth parts, but a crossbow enters the frame before any words can pass her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> all dialogue is holly black's i didnt add anything she owns that periodt.  
follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


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